Thursday, 3 September 2009

"Distortion," "tortured," "torment" -- these words refer to the twisted nature of the psyche, its complexity, which Jung placed at the fundament of psychic life. Our complexes are a twisting-together of opposites. Etymologically, "twist," "wrestle," "wreath" and the "writhing" of our torment belong together. We are twisted in nature because soul is by nature and of necessity in a tortuous condition. We cannot be explained, nor can we be straightened out.-- James Hillman, The Myth of Analysis (1972)

Psyche asks why love's so darkafter making love to the riverall night longas if she understood the wind and the rain

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There where no language ever yet was known to read across Time's facefrom right to left the Chinese conception of fate

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Loss of soul control coordinates (guidance systems)

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The continuous twistings of threadson the night of the soothsaying dream wherein no business is done no lies are told

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"Nobody can know everything" he said"not even the best of the diviners"

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The tortured memoria

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Even the most beautiful parachutestravel away from heaven as they move through the sky

11 comments:

"We cannot be explained, nor can we be straightened out." - this is soothing to the soul who thinks that everything will be alright again if they could only exorcise themselves of their demons, but who also fears that without their demons they will cease to be themselves. You can keep your demons, it's part of being human. right?

"no business is done no lies are told" - so true! What was Mark Twain's quote about lying? Something like "If you tell no lies you'll never need to remember anything" - that was something I clutched on to today as I dealt with the fallout of some recent personal honesty.

The last part is soothing, it made me think about how beautiful objects stay in tact even if you can't see them and reminded me of this poem:

I am standing by the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.She is an object of beauty and strength,and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes! Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the places of destination.Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,'There she goes! ' ,there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :'Here she comes!'

Yes, difficult as it may sometimes be, I think it's probably best that we try to accept ourselves as we are, understand that other people are as they are, and not attempt to conform either in our views of ourselves or our views of others to any normative definitions. Remembering that normal comes from norma, a word that in Latin meant a measuring tool, like a T-square, for making rectilinear measurements. But our souls do not have straight lines and right angles, they are tangled places, with unpredictable bends and twists and curves, thickets and clearings, stoppages and flows.

What happens in our dreams may seem strange, outlandish, unruly, gross, rude, etc. to our daytime selves, which are always trying to abide by the chimerical rules of the Normals. But then what if our dream selves actually come closer to resembling our "true" selves? Would not then the doings of our daytime selves seem to those truer nighttime selves petty, narrow, tame, repressed, unimaginative, boring?

About your outbreak of honesty, good for you.

The Van Dyke poem is interesting. I know he's doing a parable of the Soul, but this could apply to the whole larger question of the Eye of the Beholder:

The indecipherability of the twisted remains their secret weapon, the way a cat hisses when it's got its back to the wall. (Mwow, I'm twisted, don't feck wit me!) They cannot be explained, nor can they be straightened out.

Agamememnon cynically resisted the twisted sayings of the diviners, and look where that got him.

The most beautiful parachutes travel away from heaven even faster if they are not open.

Twisting of the guidestrings probably doesn't help much either.

About wryting-L, I fruitlessly searched all your blogs for a hint of it, not that the search wasn't Bliss itself. You'll find that I may appear to have volunteered, but then again, I'm still in the dark, like Nemo and his bees.

What would we do without the darkness to soothe our souls and allow us to follow their twists and turns?

"Psychopathological distortion is the primary condition given with our complexity," writes James Hillman, "the crowning wreath of thorns or laurel garland we wear always on the tortuous path through the labyrinth that has no exit. For, as Jung said, the complexes are life itself; to be rid of them is to be rid of life."

So this is the condition of things with us...

Lucy, I see that the tormented clouds have produced fresh life in the dancing of the raindrops on the lake in your new post, a lovely image of calm within the turbulence of the storm.

Tom you said my comment was timely but this post has proved perfectly-timed for me this weekend. When someone who I confided in tried to hurt me by calling me "twisted" (amongst other nastier things) instead of taking it to heart I remembered what you said here. We're all twisted and perfect in our imperfections. Her words have bounced off me in a way which they would not have done if I had not been here and read this. It seems fated that exactly the same word was used!